Graduating the front

I started with the graduation of the front. I am bringing the whole front to a uniform thickness of maybe ~5 mm. I think that should be safe so that I have still material to remove. Today I managed to get it to ~6 mm everywhere. The photo below shows light shining through the front plate (where the circle is). The unevenness is mostly due to differences in wood density. The plate itself is pretty consistent. Only where the two plate halves join in the middle is the plate actually thicker. This is because I need to plane one side in the opposite direction from the other. In order not to plane against the wood, I have to stay a bit off the centre on both sides leaving a small ridge in the middle.

I also had some good exchange of emails with maestro Kimon today. Thanks maestro! We discussed how to best do the graduation and the tuning of the plates. I haven't found good material on how to do it for a small cello like this 1/2 cello I am making. It is probably not possible to get the tap tones of a 4/4 cello without the plates getting too thin. The current plan is to keep the plate thicknesses reasonable. And rather than concentrating on the absolute frequencies of the tap tones, I want to make sure that the tap tones of the back and the front have a good relation to one another.